


Piece it together

by Beleriandings



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Audio 011: Broken (Torchwood), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, M/M, mentions of canonical suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27072163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: Gwen realises that for all they talk, she's never asked Ianto about how he and Jack got together before. The answer is a lot more complicated than she was expecting.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, background Gwen/Rhys, past Gwen/Owen
Comments: 36
Kudos: 103





	Piece it together

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for mentions of canonical suicide attempts/suicidal ideation, as well as heavy spoilers for the Big Finish audio Broken.

It was dark outside, and Gwen and Ianto were at their usual table in the far corner of the pub, a pint and a half down and an empty plate of chips set aside. It was a tradition they’d developed and cherished – Rift permitting – for some time now, that they’d both come to lean on fiercely these days. Since Tosh and Owen, since the city had been ripped apart, they’d hardly had the time.

But now, as much as they still hurt, things were settling down again. And that meant going to the pub after work sometimes, because life, it seemed, just had a habit of moving on.

Jack was technically invited too, they had mutually and wordlessly agreed, or at least not _not_ invited. But he never came with them; he seemed to understand that the two of them needed this time, needed to just be what they were for a little while; two perfectly ordinary mortal best friends in twenty-first century Cardiff.

Also, as it turned out, to gossip relentlessly, often about Jack himself. So, thought Gwen, really that part all worked out for the best.

“Well, go on then” she was saying, scooting closer to Ianto along the tattered pub bench and nudging him conspiratorially. “How’d it happen for you, eh?”

“How did _what_ happen?”

“Oh, you know! I’ve told you about me and Rhys. _Ages_ ago. How did you and Jack get together?”

“We’re not _together_ ” said Ianto, predictably. “Not like you and Rhys.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be stupid, of course you are.”

“You and Rhys are _married_ , Gwen. So, technically...”

“ _Technically,_ you’re deflecting.” She nudged him again, taking another sip of her pint. “Go on, Jones. Spill the details.”

He gave a long-suffering roll of his eyes and took a sip of his own drink. “What is there to tell? It was last year, before Jack left.”

It was her turn to roll her eyes. “I know that, obviously. Come on, give me something! You’ll talk to me about what he’s like in bed but you won’t tell me how it started? I want juicy details!”

Ianto raised an eyebrow. “Juicy, eh?”

“...Within reason!” said Gwen hastily.

“ _Reasonably juicy_ ” mused Ianto, narrowing his eyes and taking a fortifying sip from his glass. “Okay, well it started after the thing with Tosh and Mary, last year.”

Gwen stared. “That soon, after...” she closed her mouth, before she could mention Lisa. She could read Ianto well enough these days to know that though he might have moved on from Lisa, though his grief might have faded somewhat, the scarred-over wound still hurt.

Ianto shot her a rather sharp look, as though to say, _well you_ _did_ _ask_. “Yeah...” he said, shoulders slumping. “You remember how Jack and I solved that missing persons case together?”

“...No” admitted Gwen. “Which missing persons case?”

“The one in Radyr” he said. When she still looked blank, “the Ferret pub?”

She blinked. “...Oh. Oh! Yeah, the lady who was selling customers into alien slavery! Jack asked me to do all this research on the place, then apparently forgot all about it.”

“Yes, well. In the end we figured out what was going on ourselves, down in the cellar.”

She narrowed her eyes, wondering if this was a euphemism. Anything was possible with those two. “...You shagged Jack for the first time in a pub cellar? Am I missing something here?”

“No! No, not in the cellar. ...In my flat that night, after the thing with the pub.”

He was looking rather pensive, in that unreadable way he got sometimes. “Then why mention it?” she said. Then she grinned. “If you’re trying to sidetrack me again...”

“He drove me home” interrupted Ianto, abruptly.

Gwen raised her eyebrows, wondering if that was supposed to impart some great insight. “I think I’m missing some context.”

“He drove me home, and I was terrified he’d retcon me, throw me out. God knows I probably deserved it by then, with what I did to him. But I was… I was upset, you know, and I wasn’t thinking straight, and he gave me _another chance_ , Gwen. And I needed… I needed someone, something else in my life back then, so badly, so when he stopped the car I just… kissed him.” He gave the ghost of a smile. “Wasn’t very much convincing left to do, after that.”

Gwen frowned. Something about Ianto’s tone had shifted, and it bothered her, cut a little too close to a streak of deep-running raw emotion that he so rarely let show. “Ianto.” She laid her hand on his arm, and he didn’t meet her eye; that was okay, he didn’t often meet her eye, but she knew that was just the way he was. “What happened?” she asked softly. She knew she’d touched on something here, and the air between them had changed; this didn’t feel like one of their friendly, teasing gossip sessions anymore. She wanted to make him understand, make him see that she cared about him, that she was here. “You can tell me, or not. But if you do, then start from the beginning, will you please?”

He gave her a long, long look now; he looked as though he was having some sort of internal battle. “...From the beginning, eh?”

Gwen blinked. Honestly, she’d expected him to bow out of this conversation about now; she’d certainly given him the opportunity to do so. But again there was something in his gaze, something sharp and real. She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “If you would, sweetheart.”

He didn’t shake her hand off. “Okay” he said. “Well, it started…” he gave an almost surprised little laugh. “The day after Lisa, actually. I’d had, um. A bad night. And the next morning, I tried to go get milk, but I ended up wandering into the Ferret instead.” He frowned. “There was this woman, the barmaid there. Called Mandy.”

“Oh” said Gwen, something way back in her memory clicking halfway into place. “She was in the case report.”

Ianto sighed. “...Yeah. But the thing is, Gwen, she was _nice_. I turned up there, middle of the day, a complete mess, and she… she poured me a drink, listened to me talk. It was what I needed then, I suppose. I was on suspension, and yes, yes I know all of you tried to talk to me. But I couldn’t, I just _couldn’t_...”

“It’s okay” whispered Gwen; she understood Ianto well enough now to see that their attempts to reach out to him then would have been anything but productive. Oh, she’d tried then, but she hadn’t known him yet, not really, not before Jack had left them all behind to cope together in his absence. She squeezed his fingers again.

“Anyway, so there’s me, going to the pub every night, getting drunk and telling Mandy all the shit I couldn’t talk to anyone else about” he said, voice full of bitterness. “About how there was nothing in my life, after Lisa. About Jack, and how much I hated him for what he’d done.”

“You told her about Torchwood?” blurted Gwen before she could stop herself, raising her eyebrows.

“I tried to avoid specifics” said Ianto, grimacing. “Not sure how well I did. I was, uh. Drunk quite a lot of the time.”

She patted his hand, wordless support.

“And I told her about Jack” he said. “I talked a lot about him, and about how I wanted…” he flushed slightly. “ _W_ _ell_ , I didn’t even know what I really wanted then, but knew I wanted him to take me out in the field, to give me something important to do again. To give me a purpose. It was Mandy that suggested I give him a chance, actually ask him to take me with him into the field more.” He gave a bitter chuckle. “And he said I could come along to the Brecon Beacons with you lot. Hell of a first trip out.”

Gwen winced, remembering the horror and the pain, the way it had felt when she’d been shot, lying on the ground looking up at the clouds, certain she was going to die. The way Ianto had looked as the cleaver pressed against his throat, the unrepentant face of the man who had done it. The smell of blood she couldn’t get out of her clothes or hair, lingering on her skin. She’d wanted to forget, that night; she’d wanted nothing more dearly than to just feel something, to purge away the pain of it. It was why she’d gone home with Owen, in the end; she hadn’t wanted to go home to Rhys, to be gentle and domestic and pretend everything was normal. She’d wanted to sear it out of her mind, out of her body and she couldn’t, she _couldn’t_ go back to her home and her everyday life, not that day. It had been a mistake, she now knew, a huge and horrible mistake that she’d carry with her forever. But looking back, she at least understood _why_.

“ _Oh_ ” she said, realising. “So after that, then, you and Jack...”

“No! No, not then either.” Ianto’s teeth were gritted, and he took another drink, clutching her hand back tightly. His voice went flat. “I went home to my flat. The whole world felt so...”

“...So broken” she finished.

He nodded. “Exactly. And I drank, and I… I had these pills, Gwen. I had these pills and I… I could have… I was really, really close to...”

Her eyes widened, and she nearly choked on her words. “Oh – oh my _god_. Oh, Ianto. _Fuck_.”

“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “In the end though, I just took one. One! And then called Mandy, and uh. She came over, and I… don’t really remember what happened? I think I cried on her for a bit, maybe rambled about what happened. She put me to bed, then slept on my sofa and made sure I was okay the next morning.”

She frowned. “Tosh said you came into the Hub the next day.” She had been home herself, officially on mandatory medical leave, because Jack had told her to recover from her gunshot wound before she went around chasing any weevils.

“I did” he said stiffly. “And the next, and the next, until… Tosh and Mary.”

Gwen nodded, remembering what he’d said earlier. “You talked to Tosh, after” she remembered.

“She needed it” said Ianto, nodding. “And then after, I went to the Ferret and talked to Mandy. I was... upset, and she said I should go away from it all.” He laughed bitterly. “And that was when I knew. The way she said it… she couldn’t have just been nice, could she? She was only trying to get me to talk to her so she could hand me over to her alien slave trader thing. I was angry, but at least I knew, and I was about to do something about it. Didn’t know what yet, but I was working on it. …Then, Jack showed up.”

“He has a habit of doing that, yeah.”

A small smile tugged the edge of Ianto’s mouth. “Still, it wasn’t all bad. There was some awkward conversation, and Mandy and Jack _of course_ had to try all these weird power-plays on each other...”

“Goes without saying” said Gwen.

“...But eventually, I tricked Mandy into showing me just what she had down there in that cellar. It was a creature she was calling the Saviour, with a great big portal through the Rift to send people through if they wanted to escape their lives.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“Promise of heaven? Of dying without actually dying. A soft reset, so to speak. ...I actually understood completely at the time.”

“Oh, _Ianto_.”

“...Only problem was, the portal didn’t go where the Saviour said it did. Actually, it sent them to slavery on a hell planet. Soooo…”

“Hmm. Not good. Did Mandy know?”

“Oh, she knew” said Ianto darkly. “I found out, and I… it messed with my head, Gwen.” He took a deep breath. “I did something I regret.”

“What?”

“I um. I let the Saviour throw Jack into the portal.”

“...You…?”

“Yeah…” he gritted his teeth, avoiding her eye. “And I walked away, so sure I was right, that there was nothing left, nothing good left in the world. That everything and everyone was broken.”

She hesitated, understanding, the breath caught in her throat with the aching dread of it. “You were going to try to end things.”

“Probably, yeah” he laughed bitterly. “This time, there would’ve been no Mandy there to stop me, that’s for sure.”

“Ianto!” Gwen glared at him. “Don’t say stuff like that!”

“...Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” For a moment she just sat there, holding his hand very tight. “What changed your mind?”

“My mum phoned me” he said, frowning. “Just that. Asked me what I was doing for Christmas, normal stuff, asked me around for my tea. I said I wasn’t planning to be here. She asked me to come anyway. ...And then she told me...”

“What? What did she tell you?”

“Her doctor” he said, taking another sip of his drink. “Found a lump. That was when I first found out she was sick.”

Gwen sighed. It had been only a few weeks ago that Ianto’s mother had died; he’d taken a day off for the funeral, and that was the first he’d told Gwen about her being sick at all. She didn’t know about Jack; she hadn’t dared ask when it was just the two of them, while Ianto was gone. “God, Ianto, I’m sorry.”

“S’okay” he said, shoulders drooping just a fraction. She pretended not to notice him roughly wiping at his eye with his other hand. “Point is, it… kind of knocked me back into the real world, gave me some perspective.”

“And you went back” she guessed. “You pulled Jack out of that place.”

He blinked. “How did you know?”

“Well, for one thing, Jack isn’t currently trapped on a hell planet. ...To my knowledge. I mean, we haven’t seen him for a few hours, and who knows what he could’ve got himself into since then.” She smiled, as he gave a grudging laugh, putting her other hand on his too and leaning closer. Wanting to make him understand. “But more importantly, Ianto, I know _you_. And I know you’d never leave him suffering like that. Not now, and not then either. Not ever.”

“…Well” he said stiffly, “you’re right. I went back for him. And oh god, Gwen, you should’ve seen that place. They were torturing him, testing his… abilities. They were electrocuting him.”

“Oh Jesus...”

“ _Yeah_. And I thought he was dead when I pulled him out… it was before I really knew he couldn’t die, I mean I suspected there was _something_ about him… his recruitment date being in the nineteenth century should have been a clue, in hindsight. But even if I’d known, I still wouldn’t have believed he could come back from that. I was _scared_ , Gwen. I got him out, but I was so scared I’d killed him, that it was my fault...”

“It’s okay, it’s okay” said Gwen. “He was fine, it’s fine. You know he can survive anything.”

“Well, I do now.” Ianto made a face, gave a watery laugh. “Anyway, there I was, giving him CPR, or trying to anyway, and d’you know what he did when he came back to life? Went all bloody misty-eyed about me kissing him!”

She laughed too. “Yep, that sounds like Jack.” She grinned. “So, then I suppose you kissed him for real? Took him home for a bit of sorry-I-threw-you-into-a-hell-portal fun?”

“Not quite” said Ianto. “Or… yes, actually that’s pretty much what happened. We… well. First, I patched things up with mum.”

“Oh, thank god.”

“...Then, Jack drove me home.” At her raised eyebrow he smiled, as he had before. “We talked. A bit. And um. We stopped on the way. _Then_ I kissed him. And asked him to come home with me.”

“Bloody finally!” exclaimed Gwen, throwing her hands in the air.

“...The thing was” said Ianto, staring down at his hands, “it was only supposed to be one night. Just this once, and tomorrow we go back to whatever passes for normal in our lives. I distinctly remember us agreeing that.”

“And then you both ignored that completely?”

“ _And_ then we both ignored it completely, yeah.” He frowned. “I um, I think I needed him. Needed to think that maybe he needed me. I rebuilt my life around him. And then, all _that_ happened…”

She stared at him for a moment, then smiled, grabbing his hand again. This part she did know; she’d got to know Ianto better while Jack had been gone, they all had. He’d even let her glimpse some of his pain then, and some of the fragile hope he harboured when Jack came back. But what she’d learned today put all that in a completely new light. “Oh, Ianto...” she sighed.

He patted her hand. “Gwen.”

She knew this for what it was, of course; thanks, for being there when he had no-one, and for listening, and for not giving up when he locked her out. For treating him like one of the team, until gradually he’d come to really believe it himself. For being the balance point in his life, for when he needed someone other than Jack, more vital than every day now it was just the three of them left.

She sighed, scooting further along the bench and leaning against him, wrapping him in a hug on impulse.

“Oh? What’s this for?”

“Oh, I can’t hug my best friend? Especially when he’s just told me the most fucked up story I’ve heard in a while?”

He hesitated, before leaning to the side and patting her hand. “It wasn’t so bad.”

She snorted incredulously. “Ianto, you had nobody after the death of your girlfriend, so you made friends with a barmaid that wanted to sell you into slavery on an alien planet. Then you sent your boss to hell, changed your mind and rescued him, then took him home and shagged him. And however much you and Jack deserve each other, do not try to argue that those are the actions of a well-adjusted and happy individual. Don’t even try it.” She sighed, looping her arm through his and entwining their fingers. “Truth is, Ianto, I failed you. We all did. I should’ve tried harder, done more...”

“Gwen, no...”

“But I was wrapped up in my own shit, y’know?”

“It’s Torchwood, we all were. Are. Whatever. God knows I was.”

“Still.” She sighed. “Look, you know you’ve got me too, don’t you? And Rhys.” She grinned. “He’s Torchwood-by-marriage, I suppose.”

“Torchwood-in-law, if you will.”

“God, don’t let Rhys hear you say that sort of thing. He’d _hate_ that” said Gwen, wiping away an errant tear as she laughed. “But yes. You’ve got us. And you’ve got Jack.”

“Indeed” he said, and she couldn’t see his smile exactly, but she could hear it in his voice. “Look, Gwen. I didn’t tell you this because I wanted… I dunno. Sympathy or something.”

“I know.”

“And the last thing I want is for you to go all… _concerned_ for me.”

“I know, Ianto.”

“No, stop it, don’t make that face. See, this is exactly what I mean.”

“Face? What face?”

“All...” he made a face, all wide-eyed and soft. It looked bizarre on his features.

“First of all, _please_ don’t ever do that again. Secondly, I do _not_ look like that!” she said indignantly.

“...Sometimes you do.”

She sighed. “Why am I friends with you.”

“Proximity” said Ianto, but his arm came up around her and gave her an affectionate pat on the shoulder. “Coffee. Ambience.”

“Did you always talk like you’re writing a Yelp review once you’ve had too much emotional conversation for one day?”

“Excellent inference. Five stars.”

She laughed, finishing her drink and subsiding into silence. “Just… promise me one thing, Ianto, and then I’ll shut up about it. ...Promise me you won’t go. Not unless it’s aliens, and you’ve put up a bloody good fight. ...Not even then, preferably.”

“I promise, Gwen” he said instantly, fiercely. “All that’s long past.”

“Really?”

“I _said_ I promised, didn’t I? And anyway, I’ve got lots to live for now.” He squeezed her arm. “Who’d look after you and Jack if I was gone, hmm?”

Gwen laughed, reaching up for his hand. “I don’t know” she whispered. “I really, really don’t know.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was talking to [thirteeninafez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirteeninafez/pseuds/thirteeninafez) and [Yavemiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavemiel/pseuds/Yavemiel) yesterday about Gwen and Ianto's friendship. I mentioned how I wanted a fic where Gwen finds out (much later) about everything that happens in Broken, and makes it clear that she's always going to be there for Ianto in future, when he needs someone to talk to. I was encouraged to write it (thanks guys!) and this is my attempt at that?  
> ......I don't necessarily know how in-character it is to have Ianto saying all this, but on the other hand I do think it's very much supported by canon (both Broken itself, with Mandy, and the fact that Ianto and Gwen apparently do gossip, canonically) that he has an oversharing mode that he slips into occasionally, maybe when things get emotionally heavy.  
> Regardless, I hope you like this!


End file.
